


Reveal Who You Are

by navaan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Female Character, TARDIS Rooms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:22:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21823786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Rose learns a little more about the Doctor every day as she makes her home in the Tardis and in this new adventurous life.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor & Rose Tyler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 30
Collections: Public Call - Doctor Who fic exchange 2019





	Reveal Who You Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ginger_timelady](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_timelady/gifts).



The Doctor reveals himself to her in stages — and she realizes that perhaps its been naive to follow a stranger into his blue box after he promised life with him was “always this dangerous” but she hasn’t thought about even though the sun has expanded and worse things happened on an observatory where everyone missed the death of the planet.

They have chips and she bathes in the crowd of nattering Londoners to remind herself there’s always here and now. It feels good to be here and enjoy the normalcy of sharing chips, soaking them in too much vinegar and ketchup.

The Doctor nibbles at one or two and then looks at her with the earnest, sad look that she’s only learning now, is part of the package: “Where do you want to go next?”

“I’m knackered,” she admits. “I’ll sleep on it.”

She’s reluctant to go home though. The feeling that she’ll come back and the Doctor will have run off to somewhere beyond her reach is strong. He came back for her though. He likes her. 

“Want to pick a room?” he says.

It sounds hilariously inappropriate and she nearly spits soda onto his sleeve laughing. 

He stares, eyebrows drawn up, and expression falling back into the childlike astonishment she’s getting to know better. “Sounded like you think I’m the kind of girl you ask to your hotel room,” she says.

He thinks that over with a neutral expression -- then his face broke into a smile. The impish expression is another side of him that she’s getting to know better.

“No, you’re just the kind of girl who I can ask back to my blue box.”

“Not just any blue box though,” she says and uses a chip to point at him.

“Not just a blue box,” he agrees with a grin.

She still feels knackered but the sadness has blown over. Thoughts of the dying, empty earth still linger, thoughts of Cassandra the murderous skin patch still make her wonder what she’s gotten herself into. But she doesn’t hesitate for a moment when they just start walking, side by side, her arm hooked into his.

Back to the Tardis.

Inside she sits on the railing, feet dangling, and watches him hop around. Then there’s the wooshing sound and she knows they’re off.

She yawns. “Where are we going?”

“You’re off to bed,” he tells her with a shooing motion. “I have put the Tardis into the vortex. I need to re-calibrate the sensors.”

“I don’t have a bed…”

He shoos her off again, then looks at her blankly when she doesn’t move. “Through there. Pick a room.”

The same words.

Oh. 

Sure, _he_ thinks he already told her.

“There are rooms?” 

“Bigger on the inside, yeah, we’ve been over it.”

“Not in as many words,” she says and has to laugh.

But that sounds exciting. She wonders what the rest of this ship looks like and hops down to look around. 

Behind the door she find a corridor, and doors, and another corridor and doors. It looks like the room in the entrance. She opens a door that looks like just all the others and finds a room that looks like a 18th century apothecary. No bed.

She closes the door and tries the next. 

It has a comfy bed, a wardrobe, pyjama’s lie on the covers.

“Is that how it works?” she asks out loud. “I ask for a bed and here it is?”

She’s too tired to go back an nag the Doctor.

But she discovers the next morning that it’s not that easy when she asks for the kitchen and lands in a garden, a library and ten more bedrooms.

Befuddled, she finds her way back to the console room, feeling like she’s escaped the Minotaur in his labyrinth when the Doctor is still hopping around the console as if he’s done nothing else since she has left.

Do Time Lords sleep?

She doesn’t dare to ask.

“Thought on it?” he asks, getting them right back into the conversation of hours ago.

She hops on the railing, dangling her feet and grins. “Time machine. Past?”

* * *

Whatever chaos rages, she knows there’S the room waiting for her inside the Tardis. 

It’s always the third door down, it’s always a little more hers than the day before. She accumulates stuff and throws clothes in the corner when she feels like it. She sticks poster to the wall when they visit a a 18th century circus. She collects a Japanese porcelain doll in Japan. On Forkan’raal Four they buy her a new bedspread that glitters like the stars on the night sky. It’s eerie, alien and perfect.

The room becomes her second home.

* * *

Her mother never quite warms to the Doctor.

It their fault, of course, after Rose was gone for a year without planning on it.

She makes a point of calling after.

“What if you get sick?” Jackie asks her and tries to push cough syrup into her bag.

“I’ll just come home.”

“Rose, look, he’s a big oaf. He won’t properly take care of you when you have the sniffles.”

“He’ll drop me off and you can do that,” she suggests and kisses her mum good-bye. 

Jackie sighs. She knows by now it’s an argument she can’t win. “Go and do what you have to do. I’ll be here, worrying myself sick, I will.”

The Doctor who had listened to all of this with a grin and arms folded in front of his chest, saluted her and said: “Better don’t wait up,” he said as a parting shot before Rose ushered him out the door.

* * *

They run together from the Bordain Controllers. It's fun and excitement and not as dangerous as it sounds.

* * *

She pulls the Doctor along to watch a juggler in medieval Scotland.

Her hands are cold in the period appropriate clothes but she doesn’t mind so much because it’s exciting.

* * *

“Doctor!” she calls out. But it’s hard to see through the wall of rain. The drops are a violet blue color here and she doesn't dare as why. It tinges her blonde hair making it look like that time in first grade when she'd tried to give herself green here with watercolors. 

"Doctor? Where are you?"

A hand grabs hers and she's pulled under a huge rainbow colored umbrella. 

"Got us a thing. Might come in handy. His grin goes from ear to ear."

"Would have come in handy like ten minutes ago," she complaints, dripping all over his leather jacket, while he hook her arm in.

"Rose, Rose, Rose, don't tell me you've ever seen something this amazing."

And she has to admit it. "It's beautiful."

Now that she's under the umbrella looking into the violet of the raindrops, it's just crystalline beauty.

She sneezes.

* * *

"First rain? Now snow?"

Rose coughs. 

Her feet are cold in her boots and she's glad to make it back to the Tardis. 

The Doctor, of course, is unfazed by the cold weather.

"I think I'll head to my room," she says. "I feel woozy."

Until now the Doctor had chatted at her, not even noticing she hadn't joined in her usual banter. She shivers even in the warmth. 

Her room waits for her. Her bed is as comfortable as always, but she falls into an uncomfortable sleep. 

She wakes, when the Doctor looks in. 

"I'm running a fever," she says and realizes her voice is scratchy and sounds terrible.

"I know," he said. "Want me to get you back to Jackie."

She shrugs under the covers. "I can sleep it off."

He leaves and she's ready to be upset, feel sorry for herself. At some pint she drifts off, wakes again.

The Doctor puts a huge cup of tea on the bedside table.

"Have a cuppa. Helps with everything."

She sits up with effort and takes it.

He sits down on the side of the bed, black pants and leather jacket out of place in her cozy room.

"Sure you don't want to go home?"

"I feel better already," she says. "Tell me a story."

He watches her settle back under the blanket, closer her eyes, but then settles in, leaning against the cushions beside her. She can feel his warmth. "There was once a worried mother, calling for the blood of a good alien who stole her daughter."

"And nursed the daughter back to health with tea," she says. "I know that one." Without opening her eyes she says. "You're like an onion."

"Bringing you to tears?"

"Many layers," she disagrees, half asleep already.

He huffs.

But it's true. He reveals himself bit by bit. And while she drifts off, and he strokes her hair she realizes that she's still right where she wants to be even if a cold wasn't the trouble she preferred. It's worth it, when it brings out the kindness in the Doctor.

He starts telling her about red plains when she finally falls asleep, feeling safe, hoping for new adventures in the morning.


End file.
